(Today Willowtip Records is releasing a new album by the UK band Cognizance, and that means it’s time for our tech-death-addicted scribbler DGR to hold forth on its abundant merits.)
A two-year turnaround on a Cognizance album is exciting news. The UK-based group have been one of tech-death’s semi-unsung heroes since they started releasing full albums in 2019 after having existed prior on a string of EPs. They play a style of tech-death so tightly wound and with such precision that – as has been a constant worry – one would think that even the slightest change would be the equivalent of a butterfly landing on a car aiming to set a landspeed record, even the slightest weight sending the thing toppling end over end and into fiery collision. Sometimes, one can listen to a Cognizance song, hear how surgically precise they are, and think that such a thing might even happen within the boundaries of the same song.
Which is why it is impressive that on a first pass with Cognizance’s newest album In Light, No Shape – soon to be released by Willowtip Records – you would never guess that the band were now operating as a four-piece with long-tenured vocalist Henry Pryce having stepped down, because on In Light, No Shape, Cognizance sound just as fierce and knife-sharp as they’ve ever sounded for 10 songs and thirty-seven-and-a-half minutes of deft guitar work, head-twisting drums, and ground-cracking bass, all punctuated by an equally surgical vocal attack on top of it. Somehow, the machine that is Cognizance remains as tightly wound as ever.
photos by Nadine Geuter
Cognizance’s worthy continued existence now established, the band have done well for themselves in terms of keeping the machine rolling without a single belt snapping anywhere. Consistently sticking to a two-to-three-years release schedule, the Cognizance gentlemen have amassed quite the collection of intricately played material to place their stamp upon. In Light, No Shape isn’t that much different in that regard; it is another well-woven and tightly-bound release of death metal, sticking to quicker tempos and rapid guitar work with vocals and drums to match.
Heavily percussive in nature – and who could resist when you have phenom David Diepold behind the kit – Cognizance have been reliable for great music, while always kind of chasing the dragon that is some of the material from the Malignant Dominion release and always somehow managing to add one or two new songs per album to become part of the “this is way too strong to be within the confines of this album” camp. Both Phantazein and Upheaval prior also scored very high around the No Clean Singing halls as well, so it is exciting to see the streak continue with In Light, No Shape.
Cognizance are a band who know when to end a song, so they’re not the type to stretch things past the four-minute mark too often. They have a few progressive wanderings in their deck but otherwise the three-to-four minute assaults are the calling card of the day. In Light, No Shape opens on a city-sized block of them with “Transient Fixations” opening the doors for the oncoming musical stampede, packing about four minutes’ worth of music into something close to two-and-a-half. You feel betrayed at first given the quiet false sense of security Cognizance lure you into before then descending in attack mode from all angles. “Transient Fixations” burns away any worries that the newest lineup shift was going to change the group too much.
“Infection Chants” and “A Game Of Proliferation” march in with the aforementioned intricacy as they dance from guitar part to guitar part, shoving the music forward while the drums behind them serve as a steady engine. The tight pop of the snare drum that is constant throughout In Light, No Shape becomes a currency of sorts, and “Chasm” seeks to earn as much as of it as possible, given that the mid-segments of the album are where Cognizance becomes truly blast-happy without letting the music descend into generic tech-death mud territory.
A real late-album highlight lies in the song “Witness Marks” though, whose main guitar lead is infectiously catchy, and it performs a perfect showing of moving between the ultra-complicated riff work and tempo changes and just being an outright headbanger of a song. Yes, “Witness Marks” has a pretty blatant two-step in it at one point but its pretty surprising that you make it this far into In Light, No Shape before a segment like that occurs, given just how much material Cognizance are handing out.
It’s not the most mind-rending track on the record – though it is one of the longest – but it is a fun exercise to see Cognizance move between the all-out brutality and surgical viciousness of a tech-death song and something more akin to a mosh-pit anthem. There’s a few songs in the confines of In Light, No Shape that could forever be ensconced in a Cognizance live set and “Witness Marks” is likely one of them.
The other, then, would be one of the lead-off singles in album closer “The Zone”. “The Zone” is a warzone of a song by comparison, bleak atmospherics generated amidst a hefty and ceaseless groove. “The Zone” even provided the glorious Cognizance-style music video of the band nearly locked in place as they shift from piece to piece within the song itself, because any sort of actual movement would cause a metaphorical string to snap and one of the band members would likely fly off of Cognizance’s rotation and land somewhere across the sea in Canada.
In Light, No Shape provides reassurance that Cognizance is still mighty strong at its core. Ever intricate and newly focused, In Light, No Shape blasts its way through an insane amount of tightly wound music. Cognizance trample through the tech-death blueprint like a herd of elephants, and by the album’s fifth song have already nailed many of them to the wall, allowing the band room to explore or cycle back around on ideas within the first half of the release. That constantly bouncing, “into and out of” nature that is In Light, No Shape makes the album an exciting listen as Cognizance tour listeners throughout a tech-death masterclass for the fourth time in full-length form.
At this point, Cognizance have cemented themselves as purveyors of highlight releases to look forward to whenever they announce something. In Light, No Shape adds to their impressive consistency for intricately woven and ultra-precise-sounding tech-death and it will likely be popping up again around year-end on the strength of the aforementioned songs here alone.
https://bit.ly/inlightnoshape-willowtip
https://cognizance.bandcamp.com/album/in-light-no-shape
https://www.instagram.com/cognizanceband
https://www.facebook.com/cognizanceband